nrf9160 Thing Plus power up... serial port / DOA?

Community Development Platforms
1

Hi,

I just bought 2 nrf9160 Thing Plus boards. I registered the SIMs at hologram.io.

I connected the first device and it came up with a pulsing blue LED and the serial port was printing these msgs:

[00:02:06.661,163] <inf> app: Accel reading: #126 @ 126661 ms

It responded to typing AT with an OK.

Problem #1: I tried to connect to the nordic LTE Link Monitor and it couldn’t find any serial ports. This is on a Mac and seem to have the driver since Cool Terminal seems to be able to see the port.

–Shouldn’t it show up?

I manually entered AT+CFUN=1 and after some time I saw that it connected to T-Mobile on the hologram dashboard.

Problem #2: I connected the second board (w/SIM) and there was no blue pulsing LED and no output on the serial port.

–Is this board dead?

– Was it not pre-programmed with something?

I am still trying to plow through building code for it and flashing it, but I’d like to know if there is a problem with the board. Is there something I can easily try to program onto the board? Holding down the mode button while resetting doesn’t seem to cause any different behavior.

Thanks!

2

Update: I was able to load the bootloader V2 hex (Jared Wolff’s site) using JLINK to the dead board and now have the flashing blue LED and what looks like the same serial output.

I am able to see it with the LTE Link Monitor; the “show only supported devices” at the bottom left must be deselected.

Issuing AT+CFUN=1 returns ERROR as does AT+CFUN?

Is there some step I am missing?

BTW, the one that connected to the network had modem firmware 1.2.3 (nrf9160_1.2.3) and the non-functioning one has version 1.1.4 (mfw-pti_nrf9160_1.1.4).

Thank you!